Skip to content

Posts categoriezed as feminism

The most concise explanation of how marriage equality threatens the institution of marriage

The most concise explanation of how marriage equality threatens the institution of marriage published on No Comments on The most concise explanation of how marriage equality threatens the institution of marriage

…comes from James Sweet, in a comment on Dispatches:

For some people, marriage is still an institution that is defined by proscribed roles. The man has certain rights and responsibilities (mostly the former), and the woman has certain rights and responsibilities (mostly the latter), and these are handed down by God and should not be questioned — and even if you don’t agree with the theological angle, our culture has defined it that way, so you’ll be safe from Jeebus’ fig tree-hatin’ wrath either way.  Same-sex marriage, by not filling the “appropriate” genders, challenges the notion that proscribed gender roles are necessary for a successful marriage. If two men can have an effective relationship, and one of them fulfills the role that was “supposed” to be assigned to the woman (or, GASP, even more sinful, if they work out their own individual division of responsibilities in an equitable and loving way, that doesn’t necessarily conform to 1950s gender stereotypes — oh god I can’t believe I typed that GET THEE BEHIND ME SATAN!) then the next thing you know, women in heterosexual relationships will be wavering on the whole “unquestioned obedience” principle. It’s a slippery slope, you know?  Despite some sarcasm in that last paragraph, I’m not joking at all. Marriage equality poses a direct threat to the patriarchy. So in that sense, the wingnuts are dead-on accurate: If your definition of the institution of marriage inherently requires a patriarchal arrangement, marriage equality is corrosive towards that institution.

*applauds*

Bravo. I have nothing to add to that.

10 ways the opposition to gay marriage insults all of us

10 ways the opposition to gay marriage insults all of us published on No Comments on 10 ways the opposition to gay marriage insults all of us

What I didn’t mention in the previous post about the purpose of marriage, because I intended to discuss it in this post, is that marriage currently serves– for many people, at least– the purpose of cementing gender roles. The single biggest fear of gay marriage opponents honestly seems to be that if men are allowed to marry men and women are allow to marry women, both men and women will forget the paths in life which they were assigned by God himself, which will bring about the destruction of society itself. No, I’m not exaggerating. Let me give you some examples:

1. “A child has a right to his/her biological father and mother”
Who this insults:

No, my wife and I are not of the same sex; I am a man and she is a woman. But we are infertile. We did not procreate. For the past nine years, we have been the adoptive parents of our daughter; we are legally her mother and father, but not biologically, and since Tuesday have been surprised and saddened to be reminded that for a sizable minority of the American public our lack of biological capacity makes all the difference — and dooms our marriage and our family to second-class status.

  • And single parents, obviously– parents to 25% of America’s children. Children who are not necessarily doing any worse than those raised by two parents at once and in some ways might be doing better? Insulting to them, too.

2. “Young people just favor gay marriage because TV tells them to.” — Really? 
Who this insults: Anybody who is young, pro-gay marriage, and watches TV.

3. “Same-sex marriage would just allow feminists to marry each other and leach off the state. Men would be used for their sperm and money but otherwise unwanted.” — Yes, somebody actually claimed this
Who this insults:

  • Feminists, because supporting the radical notion that women are people does not make you a gold-digger. Or a lesbian.
  • Men, because they have more to offer than cash and sperm. 
  • People legitimately on welfare, because hey, apparently they could just get gay married and all of their problems would be solved!

4. “Gay marriage will lead to people marrying their dogs, goats, cows, etc.”
Who this insults: Anybody who doesn’t think of their spouse as an animal. Well, a non-human animal.

5. “Gay marriage cannot be legalized because homosexual relationships don’t produce children.”
Who this insults: Our intelligence.
Who else this insults:

  • People who know that sexual orientation is an orientation and not a legal mandate or a natural law– gay people have occasionally been known (as in, a significant portion of the time in which the stigma against homosexuality was sufficient to make it illegal) to have straight sex, which has been known to create babies. 
  • Adoptive parents, again. 
  • People who want to get married with no intention of having children, either because of physical inability or because they just don’t want to. The comfortably infertile. The childfree. The elderly. 
6. “Gay marriage will destroy marriage as an institution. Men and women will no longer want to marry each other.”
Who this insults: Straight men and women, who represent the overwhelming majority of people who are sexually and romantically attracted to each other, and always will. 
7. “Gay sex is icky.”
Who this insults: 
  • Straight couples whose sexual repertoire include mundane and commonplace practices such as anal sex (which, let’s be honest, is the only kind people who say this are thinking of).
  • Men specifically. Because certain sexual practices have been designated as off-limits to them, however enjoyable they might be, because of the association with homosexuality. Point of order: If a woman is doing it to you/with you, it’s not gay. 
8. “Marriage equality will lead to ‘sexual anarchy.'”
Who this insults: 
  • People who are aware that being gay is not the same as being polyamorous or a hedonist
  • Actual polyamorists and the hedonists
  • People who are in monogamous relationships and like it that way. 
9. “Legalizing gay marriage leads to the destruction of a nation.”
Who this insults:
Nations which have legalized gay marriage and yet somehow have managed to avoid destruction. Such as Denmark (the first country to recognize same-sex civil unions in 1989, which legalized gay marriage in 2012),  the Netherlands (legalized gay marriage in 2001), Mexico (2009), Portugal (2010), South Africa (2005), and many others. 
10. “Legalizing gay marriage would corrupt the institution of marriage.”
Who this insults:
Anyone who is married. Who wants to be married. Who has ever thought about being married. Because it suggests that their commitment to a (hopefully) lifelong relationship with the person they love could be “corrupted” by the fact that two people of the same sex are able to make the same commitment. 
If you have doubts about whether some of these arguments have actually been made, please see this list. Tom Junod, who wrote about how the supposed right to a biological father and mother is an affront to his relationship with his adopted daughter, says:

I was not the only one to reject out of hand the logical fallacy of what might be called the “zero sum” defense of traditional marriage, and before long I started hearing an argument based on biology or, as groups such as the National Organization for Marriage would have it, “nature.” For all its philosophical window dressing — for all its invocation of natural law, teleological destiny, and the “complementary” nature of man and woman — this argument ultimately rested on a schoolyard-level obsession with private parts, and with what did, or did not, “fit.” There was “natural marriage” and “unnatural” marriage, and it was easy to tell the difference between them by how many children they produced.

Fundamentally, the greatest fear of gay marriage opponents is something we all should be concerned about. It’s the fear of their losing the ability to tell men how to be men and women how to be women, which is what “rigid gender roles” means. Gay marriage opponents have planted a flag in the notion that men and women are not just different, but different in ways that make it a crime against nature and morality for there to be two husbands without a wife, or two wives without a husband….which says some very restrictive and unfortunate things about what they believe it means to be a wife or a husband. A man or a woman. Things we all should reject, if we don’t enjoy being told what to be.

Look at you, all flaunting your autonomy

Look at you, all flaunting your autonomy published on No Comments on Look at you, all flaunting your autonomy

Women are not entitled to respect when they walk around without a [hijab]. They are to blame for it when they are attacked.

said an imam from Denmark, Shahid Mehdi, who was arrested in Malmo, Sweden for reportedly exposing himself to a woman in a park. When I read about this, I sarcastically asked if the Steubenville rape victim would have been protected if only she’d been wearing a hijab, or if she would still have been sexually assaulted and then blamed for her own attack.

Not raping someone– not exposing yourself to her, not threatening her– seems like an odd concept of “respect.” There many people I don’t respect at all, but to whom I somehow manage to avoid doing any of these things. It actually seems like instead, if conforming to your desires for how a “proper” woman, a lady, should dress and behave herself are conditions for you not attacking her, not harassing her, not slinging sexual epithets like “cunt” or “whore” in her direction, that’s not exactly respect. That’s more like forbearance. Congratulations, you look and behave how I’d like you to, so I’ll hold off on the physical assault and slut-shaming. Don’t you feel valued?

Because demanding such things in order for you to behave like a decent human being is the opposite of respect, isn’t it? If you actually respected women, you wouldn’t try to control them. You wouldn’t make such demands. You would support, embrace, exult in their ability to dress, behave, and conduct their sex lives as they choose. When they are attacked, you would condemn the attackers, and you would never be the attacker. You would extend this empathy toward women in general, and reserve loss of respect for individuals as you would in any other case– when that individual behaves in ways which are actually immoral, and not just “unladylike” or “slutty” or whatever term you prefer to tell women how to be women.

That’s what respect is. And it’s not that hard…really.

Thoughts on the first Tropes vs. Women video

Thoughts on the first Tropes vs. Women video published on No Comments on Thoughts on the first Tropes vs. Women video

So the first Feminist Frequency Tropes vs. Women video has been posted, and I was very excited to see it. I was not disappointed. If you haven’t seen it yet, have a watch:

What we have here is a thorough, polished bit of media analysis with obvious effort and expense put toward editing, research, design, and production generally. If the rest of the video series is like this, it’s so worth having helped fund the Kickstarter. Even if it wasn’t like this, it would be worth it– I contributed because I saw so much value in doing the project in the first place, so the fact that it’s being done so well is icing on the cake so far as I’m concerned.

This video is the first part of a discussion on the “damsel in distress” trope, in which the female character is taken from the hero in some way– by being literally kidnapped, or possessed, or otherwise removed and her rescue made a goal for our (male) hero to accomplish. Anita Sarkeesian spends some time talking about how this trope has appeared in film before moving to video games, so that it’s clear this trope isn’t something video games invented– it existed long before they did, but video games tell stories like movies and other media tell stories, so it’s not at all unexpected that the same tropes which show up in other media would appear in video games as well. Sarkeesian gives many examples of games in which this trope is employed– the sequence of heroine after heroine calling out for help after/while being kidnapped is particularly effective– and focuses on a couple of situations in particular to talk about how how the game’s story came to be structured that way.

Still from the ToM test video

Now, if you read my blog regularly, you know that I’m all about agency. It’s more than an interest; it’s a borderline obsession. Video games are interesting to me because I enjoy playing them and have since I was a kid, but they’re also endlessly fascinating psychologically because I love to see how people who can depict agency any way they want– video game designers– end up doing so in practice. A well-known psychological test for theory of mind– the ability to recognize others as having thoughts, intentions, and emotions and comprehend what they are– is to show the subject a video involving geometric shapes on a screen moving around in a way that suggests, to a person with a normally functioning theory of mind, a story about agents. What the subject sees are a larger triangle and a smaller triangle moving in and out of a square shape, but this sequence is commonly interpreted as two figures– two agents– interacting, with one “deliberately” “blocking” the other from “leaving” the “confined space.” Autism researcher Uta Frith explains it here. That’s us applying our theory of mind to the images on the screen, making them characters.

Combat. Pictured: two tanks in fierce (but slow) battle.

If you’re old enough to have played video games on the Atari 2600, you’re quite familiar with geometric shapes being presented as having agency. Two of the favorites played in my house as a kid were Combat and Adventure, the former being a series of different games played between two people operating planes or tanks and trying to kill each other, and the latter being a single-player game in which you are a hero who attempts to take a chalice from a castle while killing dragons with a sword. Or, according to what actually appears on the screen, a square which can become attached to an arrow which changes the shape of three differently colored patterns. Even though these games weren’t realistic in the slightest, it only took a few seconds of manipulating the joystick to figure out what shape on the screen was “you.” You pushed the joystick in a particular direction, and looked for which shape on the screen was moving in that direction. That was you. Even though the shape looked nothing like you, or indeed looking like nothing in existence, you knew by its behavior that this was your representation on the screen. Your agent.

Adventure. Pictured: the chalice, a dragon,
a sword, and you (really).

The thing about the damsel in distress trope is that it takes the female character away– she’s removed from the story, effectively, by being turned into a goal. We see her be captured; we see her cry out for help; we see her locked up, and maybe we see the villain torture her a bit, perhaps in view of the hero so he can have that added impetus to spring into action and save her. She’s locked in a tower, tied to the railroad tracks, in the grip of a giant ape scaling the Empire State Building, etc. She is, for all intents and purpose, incapacitated. Her job to is to look pretty and wait to be saved, while occasionally perhaps struggling and/or yelping in fear. She is a non-agent. She’s doing nothing, going nowhere.

It’s common enough to hear complaints about this trope– it’s a central feature in fairy tales, and there’s a cool children’s book called The Paper Bag Princess, now on its 25th anniversary, which subverts it completely. The notion of the woman always needing to be saved from something, and falling for her savior— what if Snow White, as it turns out, just wasn’t that into Prince Charming?– is actually more than a trope; it’s the most tired of tired cliches. But when it shows up in a video game, it’s a little different. And, I think, a lot worse, because when the damsel in distress is the focus of a video game story, it’s a story in which you, as player, are the protagonist. You control the central character of the story, the hero who must save the damsel in order to win the day, and the damsel is a thing to be won– literally. She’s a non-being, an NPC (non-player character), made of pixels and memory, and reaching her is the object of the game. Not only is she being treated as a non-agent; she is a non-agent, whereas you are not. You have goals and thoughts and feelings, as both player and character, and you are almost invariably playing a man. A straight man, presumably, because gay men don’t give a damn about kidnapped princesses.

I’m not sure if it was happenstance that just as the Damsels in Distress video came out, I started seeing people tweet and post about this parent whose three year old daughter wanted to play Pauline, the kidnapped heroine in Donkey Kong, rescuing Jump Man (aka Mario) instead of the other way around, so her father hacked the game to make it possible. You can see the result at that link; there’s a video. He says

Two days ago, she asked me if she could play as the girl and save Mario. She’s played as Princess Toadstool in Super Mario Bros. 2 and naturally just assumed she could do the same in Donkey Kong. I told her we couldn’t in that particular Mario game, she seemed really bummed out by that. So what else am I supposed to do? Now I’m up at midnight hacking the ROM, replacing Mario with Pauline.

Donkey Kong, as you know if you’ve watched the DiD video already, is one of the games discussed there in pretty significant detail. It’s awesome that this father had to skills to actually re-make the game his daughter loved in order to make the protagonist a girl saving a boy rather than the other way around, which is something most parents obviously wouldn’t have a clue how to do and probably wouldn’t trouble themselves about to begin with. I’m guessing most parents would reply “Sorry dear, but that’s not how this game works” and that would be the end of it. So this story has caught on like wildfire because of the extraordinary lengths this man went to in order to make his daughter happy, and it just happens to be the case that the thing his daughter wanted was to play herself in a video game (or at least, to play someone more like herself than Jump Man/Mario).

Or does it?

In some of the heated discussion that has already taken place about the DiD video, I’ve seen people argue that it shouldn’t matter whether the character you’re playing in a video game is at all like you and therefore there’s nothing wrong with the damsel in distress trope, which is a bit like saying that it doesn’t matter whether the “under God” part of the Pledge of Allegiance is religiously significant or not, and therefore you’d better not take it out, so help me, goddammit! Clearly it does matter, or the model in which the player’s character is male and the object of the game is to rescue a female NPC wouldn’t be so angrily defended. The player doth protest too much, and all that.

But I don’t think that most of us who do see a problem with it want to simply swap the roles around like in Donkey Kong and make all video games about female heroines saving dudes in distress– Sarkeesian sure doesn’t suggest that, and it doesn’t sound like an improvement on things to me. Of course it would be better to have more opportunities to play a female character as the protagonist, and there has been some significant improvement in that area in terms of at least making it possible for the player to have a choice about his/her character’s gender in character creation at the beginning. But really, it doesn’t seem like we suffer very much as video game players by not being able to play a character that resembles us closely– not if we’re just fine playing a square who fights dragons using an arrow. Rather, the problem with the damsel in distress trope in games is the fact that there is gender, and for half of us the gender isn’t ours, and can’t be ours. It’s clearly possible for the game to allow us to play as female, and yet it doesn’t. Instead it compels us to play a (straight) male character while dangling a female character in our faces and saying “You can’t be her. You can only save her. We assume that’s all you’d want to do, anyway.”

That’s the rub.

Sexy old lady

Sexy old lady published on No Comments on Sexy old lady
Credit: http://www.tomandlorenzo.com/

I don’t generally do this, but I just want to write a blog post to gush about another blog post– this one, by Greta Christina, about an episode of Project Runway in which the contestants, fashion designers, were asked to design an outfit for an older female client.

Now, I’m not watching Project Runway this season. I used to– even have a couple of seasons on DVD– mainly because I love Tom and Lorenzo’s recaps of it. Their recaps kept me watching the show way past when I would’ve grown tired of it otherwise. Because I like a competitive reality show, but even more do I like a blog ripping on a competitive reality show. And boy, do they rip. But I got bored eventually and started seeing other reality shows on the side…you know how it goes (these days I watch Face Off, Top Chef, and Ink Master). See, I just…don’t know much about fashion. And don’t care to, really. I care about style, but the words “trendy” or “in season” to me mean “thing you’re going to spend a load of money on and then never be able to wear again,” and I don’t have the time– or budget– for that. So if I’m going to buy something stylish, it had better be stylish forever. Or at least for the next twenty years or so. You know?

Anyway, a common challenge to have on Project Runway is the so-called “real woman” challenge, in which these relatively unknown and in some cases novice fashion designers are asked to switch gears from designing party dresses out of candy or garbage (or both) for size 0 models and switch to something a little more down to earth– clothing for a specific client, who has tastes and is…something other than a size 0 model. The first time it was just non-models in their 20’s. Sometimes it’s children. Once it was women who wanted to recycle their wedding gowns, so the gowns provided the only material the designer was allowed to work with. Once it was women who had lost a substantial amount of weight, and wanted to show off their new figures. This time it was old ladies.

Now, I use that term with all due reverence. I do, after all, aspire to be an old lady myself. An awesome old lady. So I have an interest in a group of fashion designers listening to a group of specific old ladies describing what they want to wear, and trying to approximate that. And what Greta Christina has to say about it all is just…perfect. To wit:

I’ve written before about how hard it is to say “sexy older woman” in the metaphorical language of fashion… not because the words and grammar aren’t there, but because our culture considers the very concept of “sexy woman over fifty” to be nonsense. I’ve written before about the whole question of what it even means to be “age appropriate” in the first place, and whether the very notion is ageist and oppressive, or whether it’s a way to express love and respect for your age, or whether it’s some of both. And as a fifty-one year old woman who cares deeply about fashion and sex and feminism and ageism… this is not an abstract point for me. This is a paradox I live every day of my life in. It sometimes drives me up a tree that I started getting seriously interested in fashion in my late forties, right when fashion was losing interest in me. (Of course, as someone who was fat for much of her adult life, fashion has never been all that interested in me… so there’s that.)
And since “age and fashion” is so loaded, not just because of how fashion is designed, but because of how fashion is criticized, I want to spend more time than usual this week talking, not just about the designs, but about the judging.

See what I mean? Now go read the whole thing.

We saw your tortured discussion about sex and humor

We saw your tortured discussion about sex and humor published on No Comments on We saw your tortured discussion about sex and humor

Mockery, generally speaking, is a punishment. Right? We admire people who can laugh at themselves, but generally don’t expect them to when they’re the butt of a joke, unless they actually did something stupid and/or wrong. If wrong, you can take a “my bad” approach and mock yourself as a means of apology. If stupid, you can join others in laughing at those things you do which you might laugh at if someone else did them. It shows a sense of self-awareness and grace.

If you didn’t do something stupid, however, and are made the butt of a joke anyway, it’s hard to laugh at yourself. Not impossible, but difficult. It requires special circumstances– the joke needs to come from people you trust, whom you can be absolutely sure mean no harm by it. Ideally from other people who are the butt of the same joke they’re telling. It shows a sense of irony.

If you’ve ever been bullied, though, you might know what it’s like to laugh at yourself when you’re the butt of the joke and the joke isn’t told by friends. When the people telling the joke are absolutely not sharing the target with you, but if you don’t laugh along with them, things will get worse for you. Your refusal to take part in your own mockery will be taken as an act of aggression, and so you capitulate, George McFly-style, just to get them to stop and perhaps grow bored and pick some other target. In a less tense situation this can even function to make you no longer the target, and you can join the mockers by pretending that you’re more like them than whatever group they’re mocking, the group to which you actually belong. Ha ha, I’m not like one of those sensitive members of Group X who don’t appreciate it when you make fun of us in a way we all have heard 3,000 times before! It’s hilarious to hear you mindlessly repeat stereotypes that disparage my group, and therefore me by virtue of my membership in it! Hey, I can take a joke…

So anyway, about Seth McFarlane’s jokes at the Oscars, particularly the “We Saw Your Boobs” song….

…it was the catalyst for a good conversation, right?

  • A chance to see how people really understand what it means to have a laugh at someone else’s expense, and how who it is and how you’re laughing plays into it. 
  • A chance to see a virtual parade of people who aren’t members of the groups being mocked state authoritatively that members of those groups have no business being offended by it. 
  • A chance to see people claim that if people laugh at something, that’s objective proof that it’s funny– and therefore acceptable. A chance to see people take the opportunity to sniff at the hypocrisy of Americans who watch Family Guy and yet were offended by the show’s creator making similar jokes on stage at a formal movie awards event watched by around a hundred million (no, not a billion) people– because presumably anyone who was offended by the jokes watches and unequivocally enjoys Family Guy. 
  • A chance to see people declare that all who were bothered by the joke are liberals, because conservatives have a sense of humor and are aware that making fun of minority groups is a fine thing to do.
  • A chance to to get a glimpse at peoples’ internal mental rules about when it is or isn’t okay to joke about minorities: “Offensive” jokes (meaning, jokes that offend others, but not the speaker) are okay, but only in private where no members of the group being mocked are present. If you can find a representative of the group being mocked who says s/he is fine with it, then the joke isn’t offensive. Seth McFarlane is otherwise a great guy (hey, he won the Humanist of the Year award), therefore anyone offended by his jokes is being unfair by impugning his motives. Great guys don’t tell racist/sexist jokes. And so on. One of my favorites was in this comment thread on Greta Christina’s blog (you should read the post itself, as well as the entirety of the thread if you have the time), where it was argued that not every comedian can be a genius like Louis CK (who occasionally jokes about racism and sexism), so it’s not fair to come down on the poor non-geniuses like McFarlane who are simply guilty of making jokes that fail. Apparently if you’re trying to be funny but are not terribly bright,  racism and sexism are your only options.* And hey, if you didn’t actually use any bigoted slurs in the joke, who’s to say that it was actually bigoted at all?
Well, Miri at Brute Reason took a stab at answering that question, and came up with this:

If you believe MacFarlane, and others who think like him, sex is a sort of competition between men and women. Whenever women engage sexually with men–for instance, by appearing topless in a movie that is viewed by men–the man “wins” and the woman “loses.” In the video, the women whose boobs MacFarlane says he saw are portrayed as shocked or embarrassed, whereas Jennifer Lawrence, whose boobs MacFarlane notes that we have not seen, is shown to be celebrating.

Yep. It was intended to be a “gotcha,” and pointing out that an actress was topless in a movie is not a “gotcha.” She is not gotten. Generally speaking, or when her nudity appears as part of a scenario in which her character was sexually assaulted, as in many of the examples the song uses. Making fun of or generally thinking less of actresses who have appeared nude in movies is a variation on plain ol’ slut-shaming, and slut-shaming is– wait for it– sexist.

At least one person found the humor in MacFarlane’s opening skit: Best Actress in a Leading Role winner Jennifer Lawrence, 22. “I loved the boob song,” the Silver Linings Playbook star told reporters after her big win. “I thought [Seth MacFarlane] was great!“

Of course you did. Get back to us once you have done a nude scene, and your name becomes part of the song along with Scarlett Johansson, who didn’t do any nude scenes but ended up mentioned anyway because of some cell phone photos that were leaked.

“But it was a joke!”  Oh, come on.

“But he was the butt of the joke…it was intended to mock juvenile guys who think that way about topless actress!” Oh really? Then why aren’t men the ones complaining, perceiving themselves as the target? Right, because they’re not. The joke was presented as being an example of crassness, but the audience is invited to join in in being crass, not look down on it.

Adam Wilson’s take is awesome:

Isn’t it time for American men to start playing it cool? I’m not just talking about beach behavior. Playing it cool extends to all realms of human interaction. Not attracted to Lena Dunham? Why write an aggressive blog post complaining about her offensively imperfect body, and how it’s unfair that it’s always Lena that gets naked and not Alison Williams, when you could simply play it cool. There’s a reason Alison Williams never takes her top off, and it’s not just because she’s secretly a robot like her dad. Alison’s seen your blog posts; she doesn’t want that kind of scrutiny on her body. Actresses are human beings. The things we say about them on the Internet does affect them. Think of Emilia Clarke, who plays Daenerys Targaryen in HBO’s Game of Thrones. Clarke spent almost the entirety of the first season topless, frolicking in bathtubs and at brothels. But after hundreds of Tumblr users began to chronicle the movements of Clarke’s breasts with the appetite of amateur meteorologists, Clarke decided to keep her clothes on in season two. There’s a reason why the sexual revolution didn’t work out in America—it was too much for American men to handle. Embarrassed by their adolescent astonishment, they tried to stay in control by treating sexually enlightened women like lepers. And whenever it seems that forward progress is being made on this front, some Seth MacFarlane arrives, childishly pointing, and chanting “boobies.” Shut up Seth, you’re ruining it for the rest of us.

Indeed.

Kevin Gisi created a music video called We Saw Your Junk, which is fun but not exactly consolation. 

*No, I’m certainly not going to deny that it’s easy to make bigoted jokes. Stereotypes are prime joke fodder, because everybody is at least familiar with them and most people employ them. That doesn’t mean that relying on them is anything but lazy, or that there’s literally nothing else to joke about. 

Gross

Gross published on 1 Comment on Gross

“To escape criticism: do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.” — Elbert Hubbard
“To escape criticism for being a woman: don’t be a woman.” — Me

Quote of the day

Quote of the day published on 1 Comment on Quote of the day
From a site not fond of male feminism

Misogyny-hurts-men-too edition:

I’m a guy, and I need feminism. Not “men’s rights.” Feminism. Here is why. Everything that MRAs talk about that men can’t do or are socially punished for arise directly and immediately from misogyny. Not “misandry.” Misogyny. Whether I am expressing my emotions, playing with children, baking, having sex wherein I am penetrated in any way, wearing the wrong color, talking the wrong way, moving the wrong way, being sexually harassed/assaulted, or paying too little attention to looking like I’m not paying attention to how I look, when society punishes me or derides me or marginalizes me for these things, it is happening because they are things women, not men, are expected to do, and our society at large fucking hates women. Has that sunk in yet? Men, can you even think of a single goddamn way you have ever been mocked that wasn’t related to something that a misogynist society sees as feminizing? Even when large men are mocked for their bodies, they are referred to as having “man-boobs,” for fucks sake. How do you expect to improve those things with “men’s rights?” What right are you fighting for? I can tell you what I think you’re fighting for. I think you’re fighting for the right to contain and control misogyny, and direct it back at women, where you think it belongs. You want to maintain your privilege but erase its consequences, and that’s why your movement is farcical; it’s a big fucking feedback loop. How do you expect men to be free from the peripheral effects of misogyny when you refuse to even fucking believe it’s real?

Rigid gender roles– the assumption that men must be one thing and women must be another, and no overlapping allowed– hurts both men and women, no doubt. If it’s okay for a person to do something, then it really doesn’t matter whether that person is male or female, or so you’d think. Yes, there are certain things men generally can’t do, such as conceiving and bearing a child, and certain things women generally can’t do, such as grow beards, but those are physical constraints– not normative ones. Women with beards are not generally considered very attractive, but it’s not wrong for them to grow one. Right?

But while society can certainly be condemning of women who want to do things culturally associated with men, there’s a special kind of disdain for men who want to do things more associated with women, and this quote alludes to some of those– the kind of emotions men aren’t allowed to express. The interests they’re not allowed to have. The sex they’re not allowed to enjoy. The general manner they’re not supposed to have. Don’t act, think, or look like a woman– or more specifically, what we insist a woman must be.

Why not? Well, because being a woman is worse than being a man, and we can sort of understand why a woman would aspire to be manlike (even if we don’t approve of it), but no way in hell can we understand why a man would want to be like a woman. That’s inscrutable and threatening, and must stop.

Bill Bailey disagreeing

The post’s author, Evan, correctly points out that MRAs (so-called Mens’ Rights Advocates) have no desire to fix this, and in fact would rather perpetuate it. I don’t think it’s so much that MRAs refuse to believe that misogyny is real, however, as that they see it as the way things should be. Men should distrust women and not consider them to be fully autonomous agents with desires of equal importance to their own, because that’s the reality and it’s better if we acknowledge reality. Misogyny, to this view, is the appropriate stance of someone who sees things as they actually are. An MRA is not supportive of a man’s right to wear pink and enjoy bubble baths– only the right to be traditionally masculine, with all that entails. Those men who don’t desire to be traditionally masculine are the enemies, which is just fine because those men are more likely to be feminists anyway. Traitors.

This is the real difference between feminism and “mens’ rights”: the former seeks to loosen or do away with those unnecessary, illogical, and often ridiculous binds, while the latter seeks to make them tighter. Men can be as masculine (or not) as they want and be feminists, so long as they are not sexist assholes. “Mens’ rights,” on the other hand, insists that sexist assholery is their divine right and the only appropriate goal to which they should aspire. A pretty crucial distinction, I would say.

Forward Thinking: What Would You Tell Teenagers About Sex?

Forward Thinking: What Would You Tell Teenagers About Sex? published on 1 Comment on Forward Thinking: What Would You Tell Teenagers About Sex?

Libby Anne and Dan Finke at Patheos have started a project called Forward Thinking, which is a series of questions they put to bloggers to encourage them to think productively. The replies to these questions are then rounded up and a new prompt posted. This will be my first crack at it. 

Congratulations, teenager! You are the recipient of a rapidly and perhaps scarily developing sexuality. By “sexuality,” I am of course referring to the parts of you which are growing and in some cases becoming hairier at a rate which is almost certainly not to your satisfaction in one way or another, but also to the feelings you have about those parts and what you’d like to do with them, either by yourself or with friends. I’m referring to the changes in the way you carry yourself, the way you dress to either show off or hide (or frequently both) your body, and the way your relationships with pretty much everyone you know are changing in mutual recognition of all this. It’s a lot to take in, I know– “fraught” would not be too strong a word for it. But you’ll get through this.

I want to talk a little bit about how to do so, while being a good person– what you could call sexual ethics. There are two aspects of that which I’m going to cover:

  • Taking care of yourself
  • Taking care of others

Yep, that’s it. That’s what sexual ethics is. You might think it’s a no-brainer, but it isn’t to a lot of people…and I’m going to try and explain that too.

First, let’s talk about taking care of yourself.

You need to do this both mentally and physically, and oftentimes they will amount to the same thing.

For example, masturbation. It’s something you should do– you know, if you want to. It feels good, it’s sanity-preserving, and most importantly for teenagers, it give you an opportunity to get to know your body better and achieve some sexual satisfaction without engaging in intercourse with another person. It is not wrong and never in your life will it become wrong. It can only be inappropriate, such as if you don’t take proper care to preserve your privacy while masturbating, or count as poor behavior toward your sexual partners later on if you decide that masturbating is more important than interacting with them. But generally speaking, masturbation is simply treating yourself to an orgasm without having sex. If you’re a virgin, you remain one after masturbating– but you have become more educated about what pleases you sexually, which means that when/if you do eventually have sex with someone else, you will be better equipped to know how they can please you. That’s taking care of yourself.

When you’re ready to actually have sex with someone– or rather if you are, since some people never want to have sex with someone, and live out their lives quite happily that way– taking care of yourself means making some demands of that person. No, not literally (unless you and your partner(s) are into that sort of thing). But there are certain things you’ll need to insist on, for your own well-being. The first and foremost being contraception. Contraception is not magical— it is a real thing that really prevents you from creating a pregnancy and, in certain forms, prevents you from catching or transmitting a sexually transmitted disease, when you use it correctly. The pregnancy thing is something you will be concerned about for most of your life– certainly now– and the disease thing is something you’ll be concerned about forever. So don’t let the embarrassment of talking about sex prevent you from taking care of yourself– this stuff is important. Using contraception doesn’t make you paranoid, judgmental, slutty, or a killjoy– it makes you smart. Don’t have sex with people who are not smart, or who don’t respect your desire to be. They are the judgmental killjoys, not you.

The other demand you need to be willing to make of your partners is that they listen to you, and don’t do things you’re not comfortable with. Because guess what? Sex is a relationship, and relationships have to be conducted according to the terms of the people involved in them. What you want matters, and you have veto power– always. You don’t get to force your partners to do things, but you can refuse to do things. Get comfortable with this power, so that you can use it without hesitation if the need comes up. Agreeing to hold hands with someone (yeah, I’m going back to the basics) doesn’t mean you agree to kiss them. Agreeing to kiss someone doesn’t mean you agree to have them touch your body. Agreeing to have them touch your body doesn’t mean agreeing to have your clothes taken off. And so on down the line. You can agree to these things, sure, but it’s not assumed. You always have the right to stop. Always. That’s you taking care of yourself.

Now let’s talk about taking care of others.

The best way you can take care of others is by remembering that it’s not all about you. Sex is not about getting what you want and forget everybody else. Other people and their sexual desires matter just as much as yours– they are not simply targets and obstacles in the way of targets. So forget about treating people like crap if they won’t sleep with you, or talking crap about other people because of who they sleep with or want to sleep with. Sexual competition– people wanting to sleep with the same people that other people do– exists. It’s a thing, and it’s nobody’s fault. If you get mad at some other girl for attracting the guy you like, you’re saying he doesn’t have the right to make his own choices. But he does, doesn’t he? Just like you do. So maybe you’re upset, and that’s fine– it’s upsetting to not get what you want. But you can’t require that the people you like have to like you back. That’s not fair to them, and just because you want something to be true doesn’t make it true. So take a deep breath, listen to some good music, and move on. That upsetness you’re feeling is called jealousy, and it’s understandable and natural but it can make people do some terrible things if they can’t deal with it. Don’t be one of those people.

Following in the line if “it’s not all about you,” you can take care of others by respecting their decisions. They’re allowed to like what and who they want to like. They’re allowed to sleep with who they want to sleep with, provided that person is agreeable, of course, and– here’s the most important thing– nobody is obligated to sleep with you. Ever. There is nothing you can do or say that makes a person owe you sex, and nothing they can do or say. There’s this term called “enthusiastic consent,” and what it means is that a potential sex partner should be just as into the idea of having sex with you as you are about having sex with them. If they’re not, something is wrong and you should stop. Does it suck to stop when you don’t want to? Yes, but it’s better than being the kind of person who tries to have sex with someone who doesn’t want it, or isn’t even conscious enough to express clearly (in words or in actions) that he or she wants it. Consent is agreeing to do something. If someone isn’t clearly agreeing or isn’t capable of agreeing and you go ahead anyway, that’s sexual assault or rape. Now you know. Do not forget.

You may have noticed that in all of this talk about how to be ethical sexually, I’ve said nothing about the wrong people to have sex with, or the wrong kind of sex to have with them. With one very important exception that I’ve stressed in different ways: the type of people to have sex with are those who are capable of consenting to have sex with you, and have done so. The kind of sex to have with them is the enthusiastically consenting kind. Beyond that, I haven’t said “Having sex with this sort of person is bad,” “Having sex with this many people is bad,” “Having sex at this point in your life is bad” (assuming, of course, that you’re a consenting adult yourself) or “Having this kind of sex is bad.”

And I’m not going to.

Because those statements do not fall within the bounds of taking care of yourself and taking care of others. Those statements, for that matter, often amount to the very opposite of taking care of yourself and others. They’re used to harm people who aren’t harming anyone themselves, and that is (you guessed it) bad.

To illustrate this, I’ll tell you a little about what was going on when I was a teenager and going through my own internal struggles about sex and sexuality. I went to high school in the mid-90’s. During that time the movies I saw included Philadelphia, Reality Bites, Threesome, and Jeffrey. You may not have seen all or even any of these movies, but here’s something they all have in common– they all feature at least one gay character. In every case it’s a man, and in two cases there’s a gay male character with AIDS. Because the mid-80’s was when the AIDS scare hit if you were paying attention, and the mid-90’s was when it hit if you weren’t. And I wasn’t– not until high school, anyway, when sex and sexuality really started mattering to me.

The third season of The Real World, back when reality shows were still something of a novelty, included a gay housemate called Pedro Zamora who was living with AIDS. As entertainment editor of the school newspaper I wrote about this, as well as another article on the experience of coming out as a gay high school student (which got me branded as a dyke by anonymous sources). I knew several gay fellow students, some out and some closeted, and dated one of them (you’re awesome, Jeremy). We founded a gay-straight alliance club at our school. I volunteered for the Red Cross as part of the National Honor Society program and my job was to go to local middle schools and give presentations on sexually transmitted diseases and how to avoid them. We attended seminars on AIDS and met people living with it– gay men. A theater geek, I spent my summers working at Music Theater of Wichita, where the majority of my friends were gay men (and one lesbian). I got to know what they were like and what their relationships were like. And what they were like is: normal.

I’m telling you all of this because these are people who, it was being declared all over the place then and still sometimes is today, have been punished by God with a horrible disease for having the wrong kind of sex, with the wrong people.

Fuck that.

If God or the universe punished people for having the wrong kind of sex, with the wrong kind of people, do you know who would have AIDS? Rapists. Child molesters. And nobody else.

Actually that’s not true since AIDS doesn’t just affect the person who has it but also anyone that person has sexual intercourse with, which could include any future victims of a rapist or child molester. But you get my point– if God or the universe care what kind of sex you have, and with which kind of people, they clearly do not express it in any clear and unambiguous way in terms of physical afflictions. So don’t look to natural consequences to tell you what is moral or immoral sexually. Good people also experience STDs, unplanned pregnancies, and other sexual misfortunes. Those fall under the category of precautions you should take to take care of yourself; not judgments from above for doing something wrong.

Single question pop quiz:

Which of the following stops an STD transmission or the creation of an unplanned pregnancy?
a) being married
b) being straight
c) being a guy
c) having sex with only one person, or a small number of people
e) a condom

If you answered “e,” then you have grasped the relevant point of this section (and you’re also correct). Let me explain the answers a bit more:

  • Being married. A marriage is a contractual agreement between two people– usually opposite sex, but sometimes not– who have decided that they want to be together for the foreseeable future, usually with at least the pretense of being monogamous. However oftentimes they are not completely monogamous, and sometimes they’re even deliberately not monogamous. The vast majority of Americans will have sex before getting married, which statistically speaking includes you. Some of you, of course, will not ever get married. That being the case, marriage– while a wonderful thing for many people– cannot be counted upon as a reliable way to avoid diseases and unplanned pregnancies. Especially unplanned pregnancies. 
  • Being straight. AIDS became known as a “gay disease” because it’s more easily transmissible via anal sex, and anal sex– it was and still is often assumed– is how the gays do it. But here’s a little secret for you: straight people have anal sex too, and plenty of gay people don’t! Yes, lesbians, but a lot of gay men aren’t into it either. Lesbians, for that matter, have the lowest rates of STD transmission of any sexually active group. And when it comes to avoiding unplanned pregnancies, gay sex is unquestionably a better method. 
  • Being a guy. I don’t actually think that anyone believes being a guy is, in itself, a way to avoid STDs or unplanned pregnancies. But there’s no shortage of people who act like neither one is or should be a concern for guys, because after all they’re not the one who gets pregnant. And if someone is going to be suspected of being infected with STDs based on their sexual behavior, it will invariably be a girl. More on this in the next point.
  • Having sex with only one person, or a small number of people. Promiscuity is far and away the factor most people assume to be the cause of STD transmission or unplanned pregnancy, but strangely the already strong assumption of this becomes even stronger when we’re talking about a girl. It’s as if we manage to forget that transmission of an STD requires two people, two straight people if we’re talking about an unplanned pregnancy. The next time you hear someone characterize prostitutes or promiscuous women as disease-ridden, think about this. Who did they get these presumed diseases from? In any case, the real determining factor is not the number of partners, but whether contraception is used and used correctly. A person who has sex with multiple partners but does so safely is taking care of him/herself better than someone who has sex with one person without contraception. (If you’re interested in learning more about STD transmission in prostitutes– more accurately, the lack thereof– who use contraception, check out Alexa Albert’s excellent book Brothel: Mustang Ranch and Its Women). 
  • A condom. At this point, I think this is self-explanatory.

A condom has tremendous advantages. They’re (comparatively) inexpensive and can prevent both STDs and  pregnancy, and don’t require a prescription. However, condoms can break. They’re expensive given that you need to open and use a new one each time you have sex, and some people manage to use them incorrectly. So my recommendation would be: use backup. If you’re a girl, there are several options– the pill is most popular, but you might investigate Norplant, NuvaRing, and IUDs as well. See a gynecologist. Make this your priority if you’re even thinking you might have sex sometime soon. And when you talk to him/her, don’t be afraid or embarrassed– his/her job is to make sure you’re healthy, to help you take care of yourself. There should be no judgment involved, and if there is, find another doctor.

There are important things this post hasn’t covered: Alternative sexuality. Abortion. Slut-shaming generally. How to talk to your parents about all of this, and what they expect (and why). But hopefully I’ve gotten across the main point I was trying to address, which is that the morality of sexuality is not really about what people often pretend it’s about. Ultimately, what matters is the consequences of the decisions you make for yourself, and for others. In all of the judging, there’s a stunning lack of taking care going on out there. And that’s not only also important; it’s most important.

So please….take care.

Women who reject their own freedom

Women who reject their own freedom published on No Comments on Women who reject their own freedom

I’ll admit– I’m still surprised when I hear an anti-feminist argument coming from a woman. Women who don’t just reject the label of “feminist” but are actually opposed to specific freedoms for womankind, forcefully opposed, take me aback. I don’t understand how someone could want to be less free, and not just her but every other woman out there. My mind immediately jumps to “Look, lady. Just because it’s legal/socially acceptable for you do _____, doesn’t mean you have to! You can go right on living in your own private patriarchy if it pleases you. Don’t try to force the rest of us in there as well.”

But really, that’s not the case– we don’t get our own private patriarchies. Sure, in a free society there exists the freedom to live as if men are the leaders and women are followers or “helpmeets” if you so choose, but you will get judged for it. You don’t get the privilege of having your choices go unquestioned, assumed to be legitimate. And, let’s be clear, that’s how it should be. But when women push for men to be in charge, to dominate, they don’t want that questioning– they want it to be the standard. In order for it to be the standard in a free society, those who want less freedom are forced to create their own insular societies with their own rules which everyone follows and which children are raised not to question. But these little subcultures are under constant ideological attack by the outer freer world which has powerful weapons like information and the means to convey it cheaply and rapidly, aka the internet, and in comparison with these, less-freedom stands little chance against more-freedom.

And people who want to be less free know this. That’s why they want everybody to be less free.

But why would a woman want to be less free?

The common explanation is that they’ve been “brainwashed.” But that’s not really an answer. That just means “they’ve been manipulated to accept ideas I think are bad,” and it leaves out the answers to: Who is doing the manipulating? And how? And to what end? And what are these ideas, specifically? The problem with the word “patriarchy,” which is why I rarely use it, has to do with this. The word patriarchy suggests a deliberate, organized agenda on the part of  mankind in general to dominate women, which is grossly inaccurate and grossly unfair. Just gross, really. The single biggest misunderstanding of feminism is that it’s a bunch of women who perceive everything men do as an organized plot to dominate and control them, and the word “brainwashing” sure buys into that. Brainwashing doesn’t fit into my preferred definition of patriarchy, which is more of an overarching, implicit concept of men’s interests being dominant. That definition involves a society in which men have privilege, but doesn’t require it to be deliberate (privilege generally isn’t) and doesn’t require or suggest that all men are complicit. That’s the kind of society that has existed in most of the world to greater and lesser extents for most of history, and that’s what feminists have a problem with– and which anti-feminists think is just peachy.

Okay. So, come on…get to the answer. Why would a woman be an anti-feminist?

Because patriarchy– as I’ve defined it above— is familiar, comfortable, and structured. The roles of men and women, male and female, are pre-established and come with obligations as well as rewards. Being a follower is easier than being a leader, and it means that– if the leader is good– you’ll be taken care of. Feminists (according to this view) are people who don’t want men to be the leaders, which must mean they don’t want any leaders, which means chaos. Nobody gets taken care of. And that is deeply, deeply frightening.

The woman posting to me on the Cal Thomas column that abortion is an act of violence against women by men in order to shirk their (men’s) responsibility is frightened. To her, women want babies. A woman’s job is to want babies and to produce them, and a man’s job is to find a woman, produce babies with her, and take care of her and the babies. Abortion is therefore a feminist plot to help men abdicate their responsibility and escape having to be leaders. In this view, feminists are “brainwashed” because they are serving the interests of men without realizing it. And, importantly, not men who are leaders, but men who refuse to be leaders. Men who are not holding up their half of the patriarchal bargain.

Which is, as is so often pointed out, how patriarchy hurts men too. Men who don’t want to lead. Men who don’t even want a woman. Men who, for whatever reason, don’t conform to machismo. According to implicit patriarchal mindset, these men are not just different but bad– they are violating the laws of nature (no, don’t ask me how that’s even possible– I wonder it too) to pursue their own selfish interests. They are to be ridiculed, perhaps arrested or even killed.

I would say that, in arguing with a woman endorsing an anti-feminist position, this should be pointed out. But it isn’t likely to accomplish much– to such a person, the only men who are punished are the ones who are doing something wrong, just like the only women who are punished are those who want what women shouldn’t– independence, in general but particularly regarding their sexuality. Women should not want this, because that’s abdicating our responsibilities. To be taken care of. To be led.